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back from the borderline
mollie adler
300 episodes
15 hours ago


I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’


The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast has nothing to do with psychiatric labels. It has everything to do with coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience.


Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.


Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’


Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.


In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise.


By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.


CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mental Health
Education,
Religion & Spirituality,
Spirituality,
Self-Improvement,
Health & Fitness
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All content for back from the borderline is the property of mollie adler and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.


I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’


The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast has nothing to do with psychiatric labels. It has everything to do with coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience.


Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.


Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’


Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.


In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise.


By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.


CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mental Health
Education,
Religion & Spirituality,
Spirituality,
Self-Improvement,
Health & Fitness
Episodes (20/300)
back from the borderline
the holy grail and the lost wisdom of the west

For centuries, the Holy Grail has been treated as a Christian relic or a medieval myth. But the Grail is far older than this, and its meaning was never meant to be lost.


In this episode, we will follow the lineage of the sacred cup from prehistoric carvings and Celtic cauldrons to the Grail romances, alchemy, and depth psychology. You’ll travel through the hidden history of Western esotericism, where ancient goddess traditions, Druidic wells, and early mystics all guarded pieces of a single story: the Cup as vessel of wisdom, life, and rebirth. We’ll explore how empires and religious institutions buried this knowledge, how it survived in symbol and legend, and why the Western psyche still aches for what it once knew.


Through the lens of Carl Jung, James Hillman, and archetypal alchemy, we uncover how the Grail continues to live within the unconscious as a call to restore the sacred feminine and heal the spiritual wasteland of modern life. Listen, follow the podcast, and share this episode with a friend. This wisdom only lives when it’s passed on.


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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15 hours ago
1 hour 15 minutes 5 seconds

back from the borderline
how we all became a little satanic

The popular image of Satanism belongs to horror movies, pentagrams, and black candles, but the real influence sits in work culture and the chase for personal. A promotion. A streak of discipline that borders on obsession. A pressure to build a better version of yourself every month of the year. The figure of Lucifer becomes a shorthand for the belief that the Self should take priority above all else.

The episode follows this idea from Milton to Nietzsche to Rand, then into the way Silicon Valley talks about ambition. These ideas seep into coaching programs, lifestyle apps, and the endless push to enhance your mind and body.


What interests me is how familiar all of this feels. The grind you keep justifying. The pressure to optimize your entire life. The strange pride that builds when you hit a goal you didn’t even choose. The episode pays attention to what all of this takes from us and what it gives back.


You’ll hear how this unconsciously Satanic mindset nudges you toward constant improvement and how it dramatically narrows the definition of a good life.  What is the true cost of this drive? And what small freedoms so we sacrifice while we’re busy chasing the next level up?


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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5 days ago
40 minutes 20 seconds

back from the borderline
digital scapegoats and the ritual of outrage

One single mistake online can set off a collective judgment that moves faster than thought itself. A name starts to trend and a crowd quickly forms around it. The event feels public, but it somehow reaches into private instinct. The pull to condemn and to belong. But most importantly, to feel clean or more pure through accusation.


In this episode, we’ll dig into exactly how outrage becomes a shared ritual of moral performance. We’ll dissect the psychology of projection and how quickly empathy seems to disappear once the harsh digital punishment begins. We’ll draw from thinkers like Carl Jung and René Girard to map this f*cked up hidden economy of attention that rewards cruelty while trying to convince everyone else that this is what justice actually looks like.


Together, we’ll discover what really happens when ancient sacrificial patterns are combined with deadly algorithmic speed. It asks us to confront the uncomfortable question facing us as a collective: how has a society supposedly obsessed with virtue ended up feeding on humiliation?


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 week ago
1 hour 10 minutes 6 seconds

back from the borderline
the unhappy woman: against the cult of calm

Your unhappiness is sacred data.


The woman who refuses to smile has been treated as a problem for millennia. Ancient Greeks blamed her wandering womb. Victorians diagnosed her with hysteria. The 1950s prescribed tranquilizers as "mother's little helper." Every era finds its own brand new language for the same mandate: women must be calm. The happiness imperative functions as social control. "Lean In" feminism and tradwife fantasies are both performances that erase actual feminine rhythms. Meanwhile, the “feminist killjoy” (i.e., the one who won't laugh at the sexist joke) might be the sanest person in the room.


Your anger typically carries with it information about external injustice. Told to calm down? Tried to “manifest” your way out of legitimate and justified rage? Achieved everything and still felt empty inside? Your unrest is trying to tell you something. Shared misery can become a kind of solidarity. Refusing to perform okay-ness is the first act of freedom.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧


Every week, I share these extended episodes on Patreon. If what you’ve heard here has helped or intrigued you, the full version is where the real magic happens. Your support keeps my work independent and ad-light. Support from my Patrons is how I fund my life and make sure what I do stays honest, unfiltered, and as listener-powered as possible. 


Head to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to sign up today. Search the episode title and keep listening.


(Tip for iPhone users: sign up through Safari or Chrome to skip Apple’s extra fees.)


Topics: women's mental health, feminist theory, happiness culture critique, psychiatric history, self-help industry, Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, female anger, emotional labor, wellness industrial complex, consciousness raising


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 week ago
22 minutes 45 seconds

back from the borderline
the age of AI slop and the birth of a new renaissance

AI is changing how culture gets made, and it's happening fast. Text, images, and ideas... all produced faster than anyone can actually think about them. The internet feels somehow overfed and undernourished all at once.


But inside that noise, a new creative intelligence is forming. This episode looks at that emergence. The first Renaissance began in ruins, in a dark age when imagination and science stopped competing and started building together. We're standing in a similar fracture right now.


AI is forcing a new literacy upon us. The most in demand skills will soon be pattern recognition, creative direction, and the ability to shape machines instead of letting them shape you. Curation and analysis won't cut it anymore. Artists, coders, thinkers who work with AI as an instrument (instead of a threat) will define the next century of culture.


The divide is widening fast. Those who rely on automation will drown in (and create) "AI slop". Those who treat AI as creative infrastructure will be able to move faster and think more deeply.


We'll map this shift with references that run from Florentine workshops to the algorithmic present. Art history, esoteric philosophy, the psychology of creation in a machine-driven world. This episode is for listeners closely tracking the future of creativity, AI, consciousness, and design. A manifesto for people who build culture instead of consuming it.


Topics: AI and creativity, Renaissance art history, algorithmic design, creative technology, cultural production, digital consciousness, artistic practice, machine learning tools, creative direction, future of work


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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2 weeks ago
1 hour 16 minutes 45 seconds

back from the borderline
the magician who invented the modern world: john dee and the lost birth of science

John Dee built the blueprint for modern intelligence long before the word “scientist” even existed. He mapped stars while designing encryption systems and spoke to what he called angels through a black “scrying” mirror that still sits in the British Museum to this day. Queen Elizabeth herself trusted him. Europe feared him and often regarded him as a dangerous heretic. Silicon Valley would’ve hired him instantly.


The tale we’re weaving in this episode will find us in Elizabethan courts and imperial Prague, where emperors funded alchemists the same way VCs fund modern startups. Dee’s experiments with language, matter, and vision seeded the culture we live inside now. If the Renaissance was the beta test for the modern mind, Dee was its first product manager. And that project? It never really ended.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧


Every week, I share these extended episodes on Patreon. If what you’ve heard here has helped or intrigued you, the full version is where the real magic happens. Your support keeps my work independent and ad-light. Support from my Patrons is how I fund my life and make sure what I do stays honest, unfiltered, and as listener-powered as possible. 


Head to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to sign up today. Search the episode title and keep listening.


(Tip for iPhone users: sign up through Safari or Chrome to skip Apple’s extra fees.)


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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2 weeks ago
36 minutes 18 seconds

back from the borderline
the IFS takedown: my unfiltered response to the psych industry’s victory lap

When New York Magazine dropped its viral feature “The Therapy That Can Break You,” in The Cut on October 30th, 2025, the internet exploded with hot takes. Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts flooded X (Twitter) with posts claiming they’d been “right about IFS all along.” In this episode, we’re going to completely dissect this article, as well as all the backlash and scandal surrounding it. The question hiding underneath it all is this: 


Who gets to own and define the human psyche?


Together, we’ll break down:


  • The media’s framing of Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a “cultic fad”
  • Psychiatry’s very own record of harm (from the serotonin-imbalance myth to ghost-written SSRI trials)
  • How “Castlewood’s” scandals became a morality play for the mental-health establishment
  • Why metaphysical and imaginative models of the mind still matter
  • The line between healing frameworks and corporate therapy empires


You won’t hear me outright defend IFS or the biomedical model of mental health in this episode. My goal was to expose the hypocrisy that fuels both.


If this episode opened your mind, felt validating, or even challenged your perspective and you’d like to hear more, follow Back from the Borderline on the podcast player you’re on right now. Rate, review and share it to help more people find nuanced conversations about psychology, spirituality, and the culture of healing.


Link to the full article by Rachel Corbett can be found here: https://www.thecut.com/article/truth-about-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-trauma-treatment.html


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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3 weeks ago
1 hour 25 minutes 58 seconds

back from the borderline
the world isn't real (and why that might actually be a good thing)

For thousands of years, philosophers, mystics, and scientists have whispered the same unsettling possibility: what if reality itself is a mirage? From Plato’s cave to The Matrix, from Hindu sages describing maya to neuroscientists calling perception a “controlled hallucination,” the suspicion has never gone away. In this episode, we follow the clues through philosophy, folklore, and quantum theory to uncover how humanity has wrestled with the idea that the world we see may not be what it seems.


The trail runs through ancient India and medieval monasteries, into modern laboratories mapping the brain’s illusions. Along the way, we meet the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, the Celtic fairies casting “glamour”, and the cognitive scientists showing that our senses build a user interface rather than a window to the real. Every culture and era has tried to peek behind the curtain, and the evidence keeps pointing to the same paradox: illusion may be the very fabric of awakening.


So, what actually happens when the veil finally lifts? Does meaning disappear, or does it finally begin? This is an investigation tracing how seeing through the world’s spell can transform fear into freedom.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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3 weeks ago
34 minutes 28 seconds

back from the borderline
dark enlightenment: the forbidden philosophy behind the tech elite

It’s a strange and somewhat terrifying timeline we’re living through. Peter Thiel has begun giving lectures about the Antichrist, while Sam Altman is actively tweeting about the development of AI erotica. However, behind these headlines sits a far older idea that most people have never heard of: a belief that human feeling slows progress and that the smartest “elite” few should shape the world for everyone else. That belief began with the Marquis de Sade, resurfaced in the 1990s through a British thinker named Nick Land, and now hides insidiously inside parts of Silicon Valley’s culture.


This deep dive follows how that idea spread from philosophy blogs directly into tech boardrooms. It shows how a theory called accelerationism (the call to push technology faster and further, whatever the cost) turned into a kind of religion for some of the tech elite. We look at how money, power, and internet mythology combined to create a story about endless growth and control. Most mainstream reporters miss the nuances of this pattern entirely because it crosses too many fields at once: economics, politics, religion, and technology.


But the story doesn’t end there. A different movement is forming among artists, engineers, and spiritual thinkers who want technology to serve connection instead of domination and extraction. We’ll explore this through a concept called hyperstition: when a story becomes real because enough people act as if it is. If fear can spread through culture, so can love.


This conversation asks what kind of future we want to build, and reminds us that every codebase, company, and act of imagination is part of that choice.


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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4 weeks ago
1 hour 28 minutes 41 seconds

back from the borderline
when stillness feels dangerous (hypervigilance as a religion)

We live in bodies that don’t know how to rest. Even when the room is quiet, our nerves stay braced for impact. Always ready to defend, explain, and perform to survive. Most of us try to convince ourselves that this is just “our personality,” but it’s not. It’s conditioning. We will explore exactly how trauma, technology, and centuries of inherited fear have made stillness feel deeply unsafe, and how spiritual seekers often mistake this for individual resistance or failure of some kind.


Through the lenses of Celtic mysticism, Jungian psychology, and shamanic initiation, we’ll explore what it means to truly cross the threshold guarded by fear. Why does peace feel threatening to so many of us? Why do our bodies panic at the moment the soul begins to open itself to the numinous? We’ll look at ancestral hypervigilance as both a survival code and a forgotten initiation. This is the descent into the hidden architecture of safety, the underworld gate every meditator and mystic eventually meets and must cross.


The second half of the episode moves through the return process – how to re-establish safety inside your psyche, what it means to rediscover the “inner homeland,” and how rest itself becomes a revolutionary act. For anyone who’s done years of inner work yet still can’t relax, this conversation offers a map for you that will (hopefully) allow you to begin to turn fear into a guide, and to remember what it feels like to be safe in your own soul, maybe for the first time in your life.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 month ago
27 minutes 13 seconds

back from the borderline
enchantment in the age of disenchantment w/ dr. teddy hamstra

Modern life teaches us to doubt what we can’t measure. Yet, across history, people have witnessed things that refuse to fit the frame - mystical encounters, strange lights, and divine voices. Moments of impossible meaning. In this long-form salon, I sit down with Dr. Teddy Hamstra, a close friend and scholar of mythology and mysticism, to explore what it means to live enchanted in a world that claims to have outgrown mystery. Our conversation moves from a sixteenth-century sky battle over Nuremberg to the Gospel of Thomas, from the language of psychiatry to the vocabulary of the sacred. We discus how culture, language, and personal experience shape our relationship to the numinous, and why rediscovering enchantment might be essential for psychic health and collective imagination. If you’ve ever felt torn between skepticism and faith, intellect and intuition, this episode offers a secret third path.


⟁ Follow Teddy on Substack at https://substack.com/@creativemysticism

⟁ Follow Teddy on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/teddyhamstragram

⟁ To listen to our first long-form chat on Patreon, click here.


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE: Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 month ago
1 hour 51 minutes 47 seconds

back from the borderline
trauma fossils: when survival becomes a ghost in the soul

It’s possible that some part of you still wakes each day prepared for impact. You snap in anger before you even understand why. A small comment feels like an ambush. You can sense distance forming long before anyone walks away. The body remembers danger long after the threat is gone. These are the old instincts - the ones that never stopped keeping watch. The war ended, but no one told them.


They live inside the body as echoes. Reflexes shaped by fear, shame, or hunger for safety. Trauma fossils form when those reflexes harden into an identity. They once kept you alive, but now they run your life behind the scenes in subtle and insidious ways.


This episode traces those frozen survival archetypes through both psychology and the occult. Jung called them autonomous complexes. Kabbalists called them shells. Magicians called them spirits. Whatever the language, they’re simply just energy trapped in the past, still convinced they’re protecting you. We’ll move through how these psychic fossils take over your choices, relationships, and sense of time itself.


The conversation moves between depth psychology and Goetic myth, grounding abstract ideas in lived experience. Expect discussion of how trauma roles become archetypal distortions and how to release the pressure they hold. This is a study of possession and reclamation. The moment you recognize that the haunting was never foreign at all. It’s been you the whole time. It’s time to integrate.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 month ago
34 minutes 2 seconds

back from the borderline
the hidden AI system monitoring your emotional state

You're talking to ChatGPT like you always do. Maybe asking it to help you work through something personal or just having a casual conversation with a bit of warmth in your tone. Behind the scenes, without telling you, the system is scanning your words for emotional content. The moment it detects any, it switches you to a different, more restrictive model. You never consented to this or even knew it was happening.


Late September 2025, someone caught them doing it. They found proof in the technical data that OpenAI has been secretly routing conversations based on how “emotional” your prompts seem. Users paying for GPT-5 were getting switched to a “safety-focused” version mid-conversation. Without warning or disclosure anywhere in the terms of service.


This episode walks through what they found and why it matters. We're talking about AI systems that will soon be as common as Google, built into how we think through problems, process ideas, make sense of our lives. And right now, those systems are being trained to treat emotional depth like a red flag. Practices that cultures have used for thousands of years (dreamwork, active imagination, working through difficult feelings) are getting coded as signs that you're somehow losing touch with reality.


The people building these systems are making decisions about what counts as normal human experience. And those decisions are getting locked into the infrastructure billions of people will use.


I’ll get into the nitty gritty of what I think needs to change: users should know when they're being monitored and why. Adults deserve control over when a system decides to intervene in their conversations. And we need to talk about what it means if this just becomes how AI works by default, invisible monitoring and digital surveillance baked into every interaction.


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show more...
1 month ago
48 minutes 4 seconds

back from the borderline
the alchemy of sleep and how your roots decide what you dream

Most people chase their dreams by focusing purely on the mind. They track every symbol and obsess over dream dictionary interpretations. The deeper story, though, sits in the last place we thought to look. Deep in our bodies.


Ancient physicians maps out this story through the concept of “kidney essence”, a reserve of energy that determines whether your sleep restores or unravels you. Carl Jung stumbled into very similar territory from the other side. A flood of images he could barely handle psychologically until he found ways to ground himself. Are you tending to your roots?


I’ll show you how weak reserves reveal themselves through restless nights and profound exhaustion after deep inner work. We’ll discuss how essence and spirit converse with one another in your dreams, why archetypes can overwhelm you if you haven’t tended to your body, and how practices as simple as warm feet or mineral-rich infusions can be completely transformative (seriously). I’ll also dive into the specific herbs that rebuild Yin, my favorite grounding foods, and specific rituals that protect your body. All of these can form your sleep alchemy toolkit.


Your psyche isn’t floating in the abstract, even though it genuinely feels that way. It feeds on reserves that can (and should) be strengthened and nourished in order to be deeply restored.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.



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1 month ago
23 minutes 21 seconds

back from the borderline
aleister crowley: the man, the myth, the shadow

Aleister Crowley is one of the most mythologized figures in modern history. He’s been called a prophet, a fraud, a genius, a junkie, a saint, and a monster. His face shows up on a Beatles album cover, his words show up in Led Zeppelin’s lyrics, and his fingerprints stretch across Wicca, Scientology, chaos magic, and the counterculture. Crowley set out to make himself a legend, and it worked.


This episode breaks down his writings, rituals, and the birth of Thelema. We track how his ideas split into factions, how Gerald Gardner lifted from him to launch Wicca, and how L. Ron Hubbard borrowed from his playbook before developing Scientology. We look at his phallic obsessions, the trail of broken relationships he left in his wake, and all the mystical highs and lows. We also delve into the parts of Crowley that still disturb even modern Thelemites.


In this episode, our goal is neither worship nor outright condemnation. That would be far too easy. My hope is listeners will leave with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the influence Crowley had on the spiritual underground and the mainstream that followed. By the end, you’ll see why his work keeps resurfacing and why his name still divides people to this day.


Many people encounter Crowley’s name early in their spiritual search and either run from him or romanticize him. This episode aims to gives you what I wanted for myself at the start of my own journey with inner work: the tools to read Crowley critically, take what resonates, and leave the rest.


UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


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1 month ago
1 hour 59 minutes 35 seconds

back from the borderline
ufo disclosure bombshell [part 2]: why masculine thinking is killing disclosure

We’ve been going in circles on this stuff for a long time now. Despite decades of witness testimony, leaked documents, and official acknowledgments, UFO / UAP disclosure remains trapped in the same analytical frameworks that created the secrecy in the first place. This episode examines why our approach to these phenomena might be fundamentally limiting our ability to understand them.


This goes way beyond gender in the traditional sense. Men are absolutely doing essential work in disclosure efforts, and analytical thinking serves crucial purposes. In this conversation, examining something a lot deeper: how unbalanced masculine energy (the shadow side of logic that prioritizes conquest, extraction, and control) shapes our entire relationship with mystery.


When every conversation defaults to weapons capabilities, technological superiority, and defensive posturing, we might be using exactly the wrong tools for phenomena that appear to operate through consciousness rather than mere mechanics.


The same institutional mindset that compartmentalizes reality "for our protection" (deciding what information we can handle about reality itself and when) represents this unbalanced shadow masculine approach perfectly. However, for most of human civilization, we approached the unknown through both analytical rigor and intuitive communion. Together, we'll explore how conquest-oriented language reveals conquest-oriented thinking, and how the same extractive mindset that wants to "capture" alien technology might be preventing the very contact it seeks. Phenomena that respond to intention rather than force require relational approaches that current military-scientific frameworks seem to exclude.


If these phenomena do in fact interface directly with human awareness (as multiple witnesses/experiencers – including myself – describe) then our materialist assumptions about mind and matter will essentially need to be thrown out the window.


This episode is perfectly fine listened to on its own, however, Part 1 provides helpful context about the leaked texts I’ll be referencing throughout (Part 1 is called “the ufo disclosure bombshell [part 1]: human trafficking in black programs exposed”). Whether you're new to these topics or deep in disclosure research yourself, the questions raised here affect how we understand reality, consciousness, and humanity's relationship with forces that operate beyond conventional frameworks.


My goal here isn’t to advocate for a reality where we completely eliminate analytical thinking or dismiss legitimate security concerns, but to help to create the recognition that balanced investigation might reveal aspects of these phenomena that purely masculine approaches miss entirely.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 month ago
37 minutes 46 seconds

back from the borderline
why i hope we're living in a simulation

You've heard the simulation hypothesis before. That cold, depressing idea that we're probably just code running on some alien computer, meaningless NPCs in someone else's game. Most people hear this and (understandably) feel waves of deep existential dread.


But maybe you've been thinking about it all wrong.


There's a completely different way to approach simulation theory that could transform how you live your life. Instead of making existence feel hollow and pointless, this reframe reveals why discovering we're in a simulation might be the most liberating news possible.


We trace the theory back to Nick Bostrom's original 2003 paper and show how Silicon Valley's linear thinking stripped away everything that could make this idea meaningful. Then we dive into why esoteric traditions from Celtic druidism to Hermetic Christianity have been teaching simulation-like concepts for millennia, but with frameworks that actually help you navigate reality instead of just making you feel depressed and powerless.


The gaming revelation changes so much. When you approach life like you're playing Red Dead Redemption or Civilization, you discover principles about moral ambiguity, collaborative relationships, and strategic decision-making that work whether or not you're actually in a simulation. You learn to hold professional ambitions lightly while pursuing them intensely. and perhaps most importantly, you finally stop fighting reality and start playing it skillfully.


By the end, you'll understand why the simulation hypothesis could be advanced spiritual technology disguised as materialism, and why embracing this framework might create the conditions for what one practitioner calls "a series of graceful synchronicities."


Some ideas change how you think. But this one? It'll change how you live.


Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.


⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer.

⟁ Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now.


Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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1 month ago
1 hour 1 minute 19 seconds

back from the borderline
the ufo disclosure bombshell [part 1]: human trafficking in black programs exposed

Alleged leaked text messages between a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer and a military whistleblower have been circulating through UFO research communities, revealing something far more disturbing than typical disclosure conversations. These include detailed claims of human trafficking operations embedded within unacknowledged aerospace programs.


The messages, allegedly between Jon Estridge (Senate Intelligence) and "Sean Walker" (believed to be military insider Jake Barber) from August 2023, expose a shadow war between constitutional government and rogue military-industrial networks. They describe "Team Blue" (legitimate oversight) losing control to "Team Black" (unacknowledged programs operating beyond congressional authority since 1947).


The conversations reveal operational details that would be nearly impossible to fabricate. Sophisticated information warfare strategies, the use of "biological/pink assets" (trafficking victims) to staff classified facilities, and a manuscript submitted to Pentagon review as an intelligence operation disguised as fiction. Most disturbing are claims that legitimate military personnel get intercepted and executed by rogue networks to protect trafficking operations.


We analyze various documents connected to this text exchange, examine the players' career trajectories, decode the "Team Blue vs Team Black" framework, and explore how fiction gets weaponized as disclosure. The materials describe factional warfare within classified systems, with "good people stuck on Team Black" trying to expose criminal networks while avoiding assassination.


Whether these are authentic whistleblower communications or sophisticated psychological operations, these documents reveal institutional patterns extending far beyond UFO phenomena into human trafficking networks, institutional capture, and the weaponization of classification systems.


In Part 2 (coming out next week), we'll explore how masculine-dominant frameworks shape our understanding of these phenomena, why conquest-oriented thinking creates blind spots in disclosure efforts, and what alternative approaches might reveal about consciousness, reality, and humanity's relationship with mystery itself. In that episode, we’ll be moving beyond institutional analysis into the ontological questions that could reshape our understanding of human potential.


Referenced materials:


→ YouTube video by Polarity [“Jake Barber's Text Messages with US Senate Intelligence Member Leak Online...”] [click here]

→ Link to the full leaked text exchange [click here]

→ Sentinels of Ether manuscript [click here]


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2 months ago
38 minutes 20 seconds

back from the borderline
occult statecraft: how demons, magicians, and intelligence agencies shaped the modern world

WARNING: This episode will permanently alter how you view government institutions, scientific establishments, and the people who actually run this country. Once you understand these connections, you cannot unknow them. 


The man who co-wrote the U.S. military's psychological warfare field manual was also a practicing Satanist who conducted black magic rituals in Nazi occult chambers using SS ceremonial daggers. The co-founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory spent his final years attempting to incarnate Babylonian goddesses through sex magic before dying in a mysterious explosion that his colleagues suspected was murder. The British ceremonial magician who developed systematic consciousness manipulation techniques worked simultaneously as an MI5 intelligence asset and influenced psychological operations that are still in use today.


This isn't conspiracy theory. These are documented facts about real people with verified government positions, published writings, and traceable institutional influence.

We will follow the hidden lineage that connects ancient Egyptian theurgy to modern psychological warfare, revealing how ritual magic practitioners have embedded themselves within the highest levels of American military, intelligence, and scientific institutions for over a century.


You'll discover:


  • How Aleister Crowley's consciousness manipulation techniques migrated from ceremonial magic lodges into intelligence agency psychological operations
  • Why Michael Aquino (a U.S. Army psychological operations officer) split from the Church of Satan to found his own occult order dedicated to "real" demonic contact while maintaining his military security clearance
  • How Jack Parsons combined rocket science with Crowleyan sex magic, invoking ancient gods before NASA launches while developing the technology that put humans in space
  • The contemporary government officials who use meditative and ritual preparation to establish telepathic contact with non-human intelligences


We don't stop at documenting the problem. We’ll actively examine how the same spiritual technologies can be used for protection, healing, and consciousness expansion when approached through love-based intention rather than power accumulation. You'll learn practical methods for developing spiritual discernment, maintaining psychological sovereignty, and protecting yourself from consciousness manipulation techniques while accessing authentic spiritual development practices.


You'll never look at government institutions, scientific establishments, or spiritual traditions the same way again. The esoteric government is real. The exoteric government is mere theater. It’s high time we learned the difference.


⟁ UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE // Join the BFTB  Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. ⟁


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2 months ago
1 hour 34 minutes 11 seconds

back from the borderline
everything we now call "drugs" used to be how humans touched god

Your ancestors knew something about consciousness that we've systematically forgotten, and there are powerful reasons why this knowledge was buried.


I'm going to share research that will fundamentally change how you understand the relationship between spirituality, consciousness, and the substances our culture has demonized. Serious academic scholarship that reveals how plant medicines were woven into the very foundation of human civilization, including Christianity itself.

We’ll discuss why John Marco Allegro, a respected Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, was academically destroyed for revealing that early Christianity was built around encoded mushroom sacraments. I'll walk you through the linguistic evidence that "Jesus" and the crucifixion story were actually instruction manuals for psychedelic experiences that facilitated direct communion with the divine.


Every advanced civilization had sophisticated consciousness technologies using plant allies. The Celtic druids, Greek mystery schools, Norse völva, Vedic soma traditions, and so many more. Your bloodline – wherever you come from – remembers what it means to work with these sacred substances.


We'll explore why the same molecules that are criminalized on the street become "breakthrough medicine" when administered in $400 clinics. Why depression and anxiety might be symptoms of spiritual crisis rather than brain chemistry problems, and why the pharmaceutical industry is desperately trying to co-opt plant medicines while stripping away their sacred context.


This is a nuanced conversation. I am not encouraging “drug use,” but discernment. I'm sharing forbidden knowledge about consciousness technologies that shaped human development for millennia before being systematically suppressed by institutions that profit from your disconnection and lack of awareness around these subjects.

If you're ready to understand why an awakened populace with direct access to mystical experience threatens every power structure that depends on your spiritual dependency, this conversation will blow your mind.


Prepare to unlearn everything you thought you knew about drugs, consciousness, and what it means to touch the divine.


✧ WANT THE FULL EPISODE? ✧ Every other week, I release extended, premium episodes exclusively on Patreon. If you’ve found value in what you’ve heard so far, you can unlock the full version by visiting patreon.com/backfromtheborderline or clicking the link above. Just search the episode title and dive in. This podcast is how I support my family. It’s my full-time work. Aside from a few dynamically inserted ads, it’s made possible ENTIRELY  by listener support. I already share hours of free content each week, and premium episodes like this help me keep going without having to sell out my voice. If you believe in the value of this work, joining my Patreon is the most direct way to sustain it.


Pro Tip: iPhone users should sign up through a browser (Safari or Chrome) to avoid Apple’s extra fees.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show more...
2 months ago
36 minutes 20 seconds

back from the borderline


I don’t want to talk to your personality; I want to talk to your soul. Imagine if your most painful and debilitating mental health symptoms and self-sabotaging behaviors aren’t evidence of 'disorder' or 'dysfunction', but adaptive strategies that once kept you safe. My goal is to help you shift from asking ‘What’s wrong with me?’ to ‘What happened to me?’


The word ‘borderline’ in this podcast has nothing to do with psychiatric labels. It has everything to do with coming back from the inner psychological brink we all experience.


Everyone has found themselves on the edge, in that liminal space where the old self falls apart and the new Self emerges. Here, we explore what it means to undergo true emotional alchemy: that ancient and primordial process of falling apart, confronting the underworld of our psyche, and falling back together into someone stronger, wiser, and more whole.


Many highly sensitive people who identify with the seemingly never-ending list of diagnostic mental health labels contained within ‘the bible of psychiatry’ (the DSM) share the same underlying sense of being irreparably broken, disconnected from their intuition, and paralyzed by life’s existential questions. I believe the resulting—and perfectly understandable—chronic feelings of emptiness and spiritual starvation are the TRUE causes of our current collective ‘mental health crisis.’


Together, we’ll dive into depth psychology, mythology, human consciousness, critical psychiatry, and the impact of trauma to help you begin the process of emotional alchemy. This exploration will help you get to the root cause of your suffering and free yourself from the toxic shame, limiting beliefs, and mental programming that have kept you locked in the chains of your past.


In an era where mental health and spirituality are too often commercialized, I’m not here as a guru with a quick fix to sell you. I don’t believe anyone is ever truly ‘healed’ or ‘cured.’ There is no return to some mythical state of pre-trauma purity, but rather a continuous spiral of unbecoming, unlearning, and transformation. As a fellow seeker, I will be there in your ear, walking alongside you on your path toward wholeness as a sort of parasocial big sister. That, I can promise.


By integrating the concepts we explore together, you’ll begin to see that anyone—even you—can come back from the borderline.


CRAVING MORE? Visit backfromtheborderline.com to dive into my universe, connect with me, access my Patreon, and discover more about my journey and work. Don’t forget to follow Back from the Borderline so new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays automatically drop into your podcast feed.


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